Experiments in rights control : expression and enforcement

The Internet has transformed our long-term perception on working, entertainment, and living rapidly. We can now work comfortably in our own home, shop for our groceries without stepping outside the house, and enjoy high-quality entertaining digital content, such as music or lm. This digital content can easily be produced and copied with available digital technologies; and the content can be distributed and shared through the Internet almost effortlessly. This phenomenon has created a wide variety of usage scenarios, and has also induced huge loss to the lm and music\ud industry through piracy. To solve this problem, we have to protect the\ud digital content by controlling how the users are using the content. Thus, rights control has emerged as a potential solution

The rate of dissolution of aluminum in hydrofluoric acid

Pure aluminum has a relatively low strength, and its use is, therefore, rather limited. However, the resistance of pure aluminum to the attack of acids and many neutral solutions is higher than that of less pure aluminum or most of the aluminum-base alloys. For this reason, alclad alloy sheets, are made with a coating of pure aluminum on one or both sides of an aluminum alloy core. The coating is metallurgically bonded to the core over the entire area of contact. Thus the coating electrochemically protects the core from corrosive attack. Aluminum is more negative in the electrochemical series than most other common metals, hence its behavior in corrosive environments is greatly influenced by contact with many other metals which either form an alloy with aluminum or are in external contact with it. The resistance of pure aluminum against atmospheric attack, and also to the destructive action of some acids is explained by the presence of a surface oxide film that forms on aluminum and its alloys upon exposure to the atmosphere. The film, although thin, is adherent, highly protective, and resists corrosive attack under most conditions* A thicker and more protective film can be formed by a chemical or electrochemical treatment. This film is usually invisible to the unaided eye. The corrosion of aluminum in neutral, or nearly neutral solutions is accompanied by the formation of hydrated aluminum oxide, which usually sticks to the surface of the metal, and then protects it from further attack. For this reason, the attack by some solutions may be relatively rapid at first, but as soon as the insoluble products of the reaction adhering to the surface are formed, a continuous film covers the metal reducing the contact of the solution with the underlying metal. As a result, the corrosion stops or is reduced to a very low rate. In solutions which tend to dissolve the existing oxide coating or in solutions which tend to produce highly soluble corrosion products, the attack would be expected to be relatively greater than what it would be in solutions in which the film is spontaneously healed. Therefore, in many solutions the corrosion rate will be partially controlled by the solubility of the corrosion products. Extensive research has been carried out on the rate of dissolution of aluminum in various acids and bases. Many papers have been published regarding the mechanism of attack on aluminum by aqueous solutions. However, no work has been done on the mechanism and rate of dissolution of aluminum in hydrofluoric acid. With this purpose in mind, the present study --Introduction, pages 1-3

How to pay in LicenseScript

Current DRM systems do not provide flexible payment methods, requiring the user to handle the payment by hand. For instance, when the user needs to pay for watching a movie, she needs to decide which available payment method is the most optimal and suitable. This is a rather cumbersome process for the user that can be avoided by the specification of payment policies. A payment policy automates the payment process of each content usage, choosing the best alternative among the possible payment methods. We show how LicenseScript is able to model payment policies, allowing the user to precisely specify how a payment of content usage should be performed

Immunochemistry and Molecular Approaches towards Identification of Malaysian Cyprinid Herpesvirus

Immunochemistry and molecular approaches were used to identify a Malaysian cyprinid herpesvirus responsible for papilloma among Koi carps (Cyprinus carpio L.) and goldfish (Carassius auratus L.) in Malaysia. Immunochemistry approaches employing hybridoma technology established a hybridoma clone (DG3-1) producing specific IgM K light chain monoclonal antibody (MAb) against Malaysian cyrprinid herpesvirus. The MAb was cross-reactive against Japanese cyprinid herpesvirus type 1 (CHV) antigens but not against Channel catfish herpesvirus (CCV) and Salmonid herpesvirus (SHV-2) in immunodot-blot assay. The cyprinid herpesvirus type-specific epitope recognised by the MAb was located on two viral polypeptides having the molecular weight of 58,000 and 67,000 daltons in Malaysian cyprinid herpesvirus and CHV through Western blot analysis. As the MAb showed no neutralization activity against virus infection in cell culture and glycosylation inhibitors did not affect the presence and migration of the antigens under polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis, evidences as such suggest the antigens are nonglycosylated components of the viral structure. Immunohistochemical analysis on goldfish papilloma tissue sections with MAb using labeled avidin binding (LAB) method demonstrated specific staining of cyprinid herpesvirus antigens within the nucleus of infected cells. Specific localization of these viral antigens in the cell nuclei were consistent with reports of nonglycosylated herpesvirus antigens involving viral capsid components or DNA-binding proteins. Employing molecular techniques, cyprinid herpesvirus nucleic acid sequences were later confirmed to be present in the immunohistochemical positive papilloma sections through in situ hybridization assay using a 1,161 bp CHV nucleic acid probe. Molecular identification by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) using CHV specific primers was extremely sensitive, specific, rapid and practical. The technique successfully amplified a 433 bp DNA fragment from frozen archival goldfish papilloma tissues and recent papillomas obtained from goldfish and carp hybrids. Nucleic acid sequencing of the DNA fragment revealed identical sequence homology with CHV, thus confirming conclusively that Malaysian cyprinid herpesvirus and CHV are members of the same group of virus. Detection sensitivity level as assessed with first step PCR, was capable of detecting viral nucleic acids from 1 fg or 200 copies of actual viral target sequences and from as low as 1-10 virus infected cells. Sensitivity level was increased 100-1000-fold when nested PCR strategy was employed. Specificity of detection evaluated by DNA fragment polymorphism demonstrated homologous DNA sequences among cyprinid herpesvirus representatives from Malaysia, Israel and Japan. A quantitative competitive PCR assay based on the current viral target sequence also provided quantitative description of infection and viral burden with preliminary results indicative of CHV possessing an alphaherpesvirus gene-like expression kinetics

Licensing structured data with ease

In response to the need of a rights expression language (REL), we have proposed LicenseScript, an REL based on multiset rewriting and Prolog. LicenseScript has advantage over existing RELs, in the sense that it has a well-defined semantics. In fact besides semantics, LicenseScript has a lot of other advantages over other RELs. The mission of this paper is twofold: (1) to put a spotlight on these advantages, (2) at the same time justifying some of our design rationales in LicenseScript. We accomplish this by giving examples of licensing models that are greatly facilitated by the use of Prolog as a component of LicenseScript. At the same time showing\ud how LicenseScript makes these non-trivial models viable, we also make LicenseScript a stronger case than it previously might have occurred to be

Service brokerage with Prolog

Service brokerage is a complex problem. At the design stage the semantic gap between user, device and system requirements must be bridged, and at the operational stage the conflicting objectives of many parties in the value chain must be reconciled. For example why should a user who wants to watch a film need to understand that due to limited battery power the film can only be shown in low resolution? Why should the user have to understand the business model of a content provider? To solve these problems we present (1) the concept of a packager who acts as a service broker, (2) a design derived systematically from a semi-formal specification (the CC-model), and (3) an implementation using our Prolog based LicenseScript language

LicenseScript: A Novel Digital Rights Language and its Semantics

We propose LicenseScript as a new multiset rewriting/ logic based language for expressing dynamic conditions of use of digital assets such as music, video or private data. LicenseScript differs from other DRM languages in that it caters for the intentional but legal manipulation of data. We believe this feature is the answer to providing the flexibility needed to support emerging usage paradigms of digital data. We provide the language with a simple semantics based on traces

Caught-In or Breaking-Free from the Middle Income Trap: The Case of Malaysia

A previous version of this paper was presented at the 2018 SJE Conference on Political Economy of the Middle-income Trap held in Seoul.Malaysia is among the developing economies that has shown relative promise in breaking its middle income trap (MIT). However, the lack of sophistication of institutions for industrial upgrade and the attainment of productive routines means that many local firms remain self-organized and suffer from the absence of complementarities. This study seeks to understand Malaysias position on MIT and compare the countrys current trajectory against newly industrialized economies (e.g., South Korea and Taiwan). This study focuses on five explorations that depict Malaysias performance position in achieving developed status: (1) income and foreign direct investment, (2) economic structure, (3) upgrading, (4) social capital, and (5) education. This study argues that the key barriers that prevent Malaysia from exiting MIT stem from the lack of effective measures in terms of social capital to improve education and institutions. Thus, the development of productive routines with instituted inclusive measures to accelerate the upgrading process is crucial to break MIT